Italy is so abundantly
endowed with remains of classical antiquity that we
tend to overlook the even older bits of ancient Italy.
There are many that we really don't know much about. If
you go back to about 700 BC, you find an Italian peninsula
not yet characterized by strong Italic tribes, although
you certainly find early versions of Latini, Campanians,
Oscans, Sabines, Volscians, and so forth, among whom the
Latini did famously well for themselves. And, importantly,
you find a large and strong Etruscan
presence spread from north to south even as far as the
southern portion of present-day Campania, at which point
it runs into remnants of early prehistoric
peoples, and smatterings of Greeks
immigrant settlers and traders. (That relatively
small Greek presence started around 800 BC but by 600 had
expanded greatly and established many of the well-known
settlements of Magna Grecia in Italy.).

It is during this period, the first half of the 7th
century BC (from 700 to 650), that someone built a
settlement with impressively large walls (termed
"Cyclopean"*) on the hill upon which perches the
town of Atena Lucana, a town with a claim to being the
oldest settlement in the area. The most interesting thing
about that claim is that archaeologists see the site as
having been some sort of communication hub between quite
different cultures. Atena Lucana is technically not part
of the Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park, although
it is close enough to be included as one the towns
associated with that park.

*(There are a number of such examples of
large stone masonry elsewhere in Italy — farther north,
for example; see entries on Fiuggi
and Roccamonfina, or in the
Nuraghic structures of
Sardinia. Describing the walls of Atena Lucana as
"Cyclopean" here means simply "very large" and does not
necessarily imply a relationship among the respective
builders.)

I have not yet had the
chance to wander through the small archaeological
museum in Atena Lucana; I will do so at the first
opportunity and report back; sight unseen, I know that it
will be well done and that they will need a lot more
money. Atena Lucana is 115 km/70 miles SE of Naples and 50
km/30 miles inland (due east) from Paestum. It is on the
other side of the Alburni massif (map, just above Sala
Consilina), strategically placed at about 650 meters on a
hill overlooking the Tanagro
river and guarding the ancient approaches to the Diano
Plain (Vallo di Diano), the long, narrow passage to
southern Italy. Just east of the town and the river, the
Maddalena mountains start their climb and form the
boundary between the modern regions of Campania and
Basilicata. There are not a lot of ancient written sources
on the origins of Atena Lucana. Roman sources mention Atina
or Campus Atinas, and Pliny the Elder calls
the inhabitants 'Atinates' and lists them as one of the Lucanian peoples. Whether or
not the original name corresponded to "Athens,"
purportedly so named by Greeks settlers, is debatable, and
most sources claim that the name, in fact, does not
mean "Lucanian Athens," as pleasant and poetic as that
might sound.

It is not at all clear who built the walls and I haven't
found any unanimity of opinion on that subject. Some
sources say it is an early Greek settlement, which would
be strange since the Greeks built along the coasts of
Italy and Atena Lucana is well inland. It might have been
the earlier Lucanians, settlers from farther north and a
descendant culture of the Samnites.
The Lucanians had settlements both along the southern
coasts (the Tyrrhenian as well as the Ionian) and inland.
Indeed, Atena Lucana was one of the principal cities in
the so-called Lucanian Federation. They were displaced
from the coast by the Greeks, but later returned and spent
a few centuries contesting the whole area with the Greeks
until the Romans took it all over (roughly between 300 and
200 BC).

One intriguing theory says that the walls were the work of
inhabitants before the Greeks and Lucanians. There were
indeed earlier peoples to whom we have given names in our
histories of the ancient world, such as the Enotrians, who
inhabited the Ionian and Tyrrhenian coasts and were in
southern Italy possibly as early as the middle of the
second millennium BC, well before even the Etruscans. The
Greeks of Magna Grecia regarded them almost mythically,
holding them to be descended from the ancient pastoral
people of Arcadia, the mythical home of Pan. That would
put them way back among the "Pelasgians," a catch-all term
used by early Greeks histories to describe the people who
were in Greece even before the Greeks. A connection to
that degree of antiquity in the walls of Atena Lucana is
hard to substantiate. Tempting, yes.

In any event, the peoples of pre-Roman Italy were
many, and only the few and famous such as the Greeks and
Etruscans have left substantial pieces lying around on the
ground (or below it) to help us figure out who lived when
and where. Some others, such as the Samnites, Lucanians
and, as noted, the Sardinians and great wall builders of
central Italy have also left large fragments. All we can
say with a degree of certainty is that there were, indeed,
prehistoric peoples on the peninsula who were largely
overwhelmed by Indo-European tribes beginning in the
second millennium BC who, following Pareti (bibliography),
are termed "first Italics" and "second Italics," depending
on when they arrived and from which direction — north to
south or from east to west across the Adriatic or Ionian
seas. These include all the well- and lesser known
cultures in Italy bonded linguistically by languages
related to a presumed parent tongue of Latin. Pareti
excludes the non-Indo-European Etruscans from this
grouping. Whether any of these people built the original
settlement at Atena Lucana is still a mystery, at least to
me.

The first real archaeology at Atena Lucana was at
the end of the 1800s and beginnings of the 1900s with the
emphasis on the wall around the city, the perimeter of
which had only recently been sketched out. Most of the
evidence was (and still is) unfortunately covered by
centuries of subsequent layers, including the nucleus of
the modern town. The wall is the oldest evidence of human
habitation at Atena Lucana. As well, tombs from the 6th
and 5th centuries B.C. were found, as well as later Roman
ruins. In 1925 construction of an aqueduct brought to
light remains of ceramics, statuary and an assortment of
funerary ornaments. The 1960s saw a rebirth in
archaeological interest in Atena Lucana on the part of the
Provincial Museum of Salerno at which time bronze weapons
and bowls were uncovered. Research continues at the
present time. As might be expected, Roman ruins in the
area are easier to find, but emphasis is on the evidence
in the hundreds of necropoli, for example, that might shed
more light on truly "ancient" inhabitants and the role
that the site may have played as a presumed way-station on
the way to cultures farther south in Italy.

bibliography:-Lo Schiavo, F.
(1984) "Central and Southern Italy in the Late Bronze
Age," in Crossroads of the Mediterranean, T.
Hackens, N. Holloway, R. Holloway (eds), pp. 55-122.-Tardugno, Maria
Luisa (2010) L'area "Nord-Lucana" ed il sito di
Atena Lucana: identità e caratteri di un gruppo
indigeno ai margini del Vallo di Diano. [The
North-Lucana area and the site at Atena Lucana: identity
and character of an indigenous group on the fringes of
the Diano Plain] Doctoral thesis, Frederick II U. of
Naples. -Torelli, Mario. (1977) Greci e
indigeni in Magna Grecia: Ideologia religiosa e
rapporti di classe. [Greek and indigenous peoples
in Magna Grecia and relationships among classes] Studi
Storici, year 18, n. 4, (Oct. - Dec.) Pub. by Fondazione
Istituto Gramsci, Rome. -Pareti, Luigi Pareti. Storia
della regione Lucano-Bruzzia nell'antichità
[History of the Lucano-Bruzzia region in antiquity],
collected works, volume 1. Ed. Storia e
Letteratura. [note: "Bruzzia" is an adjectival form of
Bruzi (also Brettii or Bruttii), an ancient people who
inhabited ancient Calabria before the Greeks or
Lucanians. In spite of the similarity, the term is
apparently not related to "Abruzzo" or "Abruzzi", used
to describe an area north of Campania.]